Barry Baker

Loves journalism, is not a journalist. Loves politics, is not a politician. Loves the media, is not a medium. Barry is committed to helping the world become a more interesting place with Power of Opinion.

The end result of the 1996 campaign was that the NDP won the election with 39 of 75 seats, but with only 39.45% of the popular vote. Gordon Campbell's Liberals earned 37,534 more votes for 41.82% of the popular vote, but claimed just 33 seats. The Reform and Progressive Democratic parties collectively polled more than 15% of the popular vote, but claimed just 3 seats between them. Mr. Campbell's loss despite his superior showing in the popular vote has since motivated him to explore alternate electoral systems such as the Single Transferable Vote system proposed by the Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Reform, which BC voted down in the 2005 referendum.

A review of individual riding results for the 1996 election indicates that if the three sibling centre-right parties had managed to ally themselves in some way (via a coalition or other means) prior to the election rather than splitting the vote, the NDP tally could have been reduced by as many as 20 of their 39 seats, and the Casino Gate never would have seen the light of day.

Likewise, a review of individual riding results for the 2001 provincial election indicate that had voters not split their ballots between the NDP and Green Party, the left would have won an additional 7 seats, qualified for the benefits associated with official party status, and presented a much more effective opposition to the Liberal majority. The impact of a coalition on the left would have been much more profound however in the 2005 election, when the Green and NDP votes combined would have won an additional 11 seats to take the prize and deny the Liberals a second mandate.

I respectfully disagree with the notion that our electoral systems needs fixing. Voters in the two Kamloops ridings were the only voters in the province to deny even a simple majority to the STV question (the referendum required 60% of the popular vote throughout the province, and a simple majority in 60% of the ridings), and we got it right.

Our electoral system is not broken, and neither is the party system. What sometimes gets broken however, is the parties themselves.

Case in point the Progressive Conservatives, which in 1993 lost all but two of their 151 seats in the House of Commons. The Bloc Québécois formed the official opposition with just 13.52% of the popular vote, while the Progressive Conservatives and Reform parties polled with 18.69% and 13.52% of the popular vote, respectively. The right took a well-deserved beating in that election, but developed such a taste for its own blood in the process that it didn't manage to put a winning formula together for another 13 years.

The solution to the right's demise was its willingness to embrace renewal while accepting a spectra of opinions within the coalition.

Now let's look at the left; the NDP has been flanked by the growth of the Green Party in both federal and provincial elections, much like the Green Party and Ralph Nader have disrupted Democratic election results in the United States. Buzz Hargrove of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) saw the writing on the wall in the run-up to the 2006 federal election, and bucked years of tradition by backing then-Prime Minister Paul Martin and the Liberal party rather than his brothers and sisters in the NDP. It didn't work, but he had the right idea.

In 1990, Robert J. Jackson and Doreen Jackson published the 2nd edition of Politics in Canada (Prentice-Hall Canada Ltd.), in which they wrote:

Electoral systems do not determine the nature of party systems, nor the type of government, majority or minority, single-party or coalition, in any country. Governmental outcomes are largely a function of the balance of party forces: the party system, in turn, is largely shaped by a country's political culture and social structure and by the electoral behaviour of its citizens.

Canada doesn't need a new electoral system, and neither does British Columbia. Why
legislate, when the power to build winning coalitions already lays
within the hands of the members and leaders of our political parties?
The problem is that the parties on the left apparently still haven't
experienced enough pain to resolve the problem on their own, hence the
cry for an electoral system that will allow them to avoid the hard work
of building bridges instead of silos.

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YouTube videos of the incident, which caught the three masked Sûreté officers as they were confronted by legitimate protesters including Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. One of the undercover officers carried a rock in his hand, and the fear expressed by Mr. Coles and to which Ms. Bass alluded is that the officers were more than infiltrating the protest, that they were actually planted to act as agents provocateurs to instigate a violent protest.

Professional protesters have widely seized upon the incident as proof that evil-doing security forces, rather than hooligan members of their own protest coalitions - like the black bloc - were behind the Battle of Seattle that erupted at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in 1999, the violence that threatened Western Australia Premier Richard Court and disrupted delegates to the 2000 World Economic Forum in MelbourneAustralia, and the fatal protests of the 2001 G8 Summit in GenoaItaly, during which anarchist Carlo Giuliani was killed while attacking police.

Ms. Bass, never one to avoid an opportunity for melodrama, drew a straight line between the Montebello incident and the prime minister, then made an astounding leap of logic to suggest that Mr. Harper actually considers Canadians to be the enemy.

Ms. Bass is nothing if not passionate; her columns often take aim at the powerful and "sinister" forces of both corporate and political establishments that victimize pretty well everybody with some regularity. However Ms. Bass conveniently missed the fact that while the RCMP organized security for the event, la Sûreté is a Quebec provincial police force that does not report to the mounties. Even if something untoward had transpired, the conclusion that any Canadian prime minister would consider Canadians to be the enemy is absolutely ridiculous. Politicians seldom act the way we would like (i.e. Pierre Trudeau giving Salmon Arm the finger), or share our personal philosophies, but we typically don't need to look any farther afield than our next of kin to discover that kind of difference.

Of course when I read her column, I had the benefit of the la Sûreté explanation of the incident, which follows in part (emphasis my own):

... the three people in question were indeed Sûreté du Québec police officers performing their duties. They had the mandate to locate and identify non-peaceful demonstrators in order to prevent excesses. They therefore joined a group of demonstrators that contained extremist elements. Those elements identified our police officers, who could not pursue their mandate. It was when leaving that group that they found themselves in a group of peaceful demonstrators. They then asked the police officers assigned to crowd control to leave the premises. Since those officers did not recognize them, they wrestled the Sûreté du Québec officers to the ground and handcuffed them in order to take them aside to confirm their identity. That intervention was never considered or presented by the Sûreté du Québec as an arrest. Furthermore, at no time did the officers in question engage in provocation or incite anyone to commit violent acts.

So despite the rhetoric, we have a plausible account of the videos published to date, which is neither "sinister" nor oppressive. Of course plausible explanations should never get in the way of a good socialist rant, and this specific incident at Montebello is just the cherry on the cake for socialists and anarchists and anti-capitalists, who have themselves in a right lather over the possibility of more trade and integration between Canada, the US, and Mexico.

But the fact is that ordinary Canadians like trade, which is why we voted Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives to a 43-seat majority in 1989, after a hard-fought federal election that turned specifically on the question of free trade (I voted Liberal). NAFTA has enabled tremendous economic growth, including growth in cross-border services, merchandise, agriculture, and investment, as well as more than 125% net new job growth since NAFTA was implemented. That's why Ken Georgetti and the Canadian Labour Congress changed course in 2004 to embrace the reality of free trade - and the benefits it has brought us - although they have tacked back somewhat since then under withering criticism from Buzz Hargrove, et al.

Mr. Georgetti recognized that the labour movement needed to accept change. Change often creates fear however, hence the resistance to the SPP. Meanwhile the SPP is working to advance benign goals that should illicit relief rather than fear. Progress to date includes:

a North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza;

a Regulatory Cooperation Framework;

an Intellectual Property Action Strategy; and

a Trilateral Agreement for Cooperation in Energy Science and Technology

Harper, Bush and Calderón have asked their ministers to focus on five different priorities for next year's summit, including:

Enhancing the Global Competitiveness of North America (e.g. develop regulatory approaches that are compatible across NAFTA borders, while maintaining high standards of health, safety and environmental protection)

Sustainable Energy and the Environment (e.g. cooperation on national auto fuel efficiency standards, share information and experience and cooperate in efforts to achieve comparableemission measurement, reporting and verification, in order to develop publicly available national emissions inventories. This exchange would include sharing of emissions information on, for example, NOx, SOx, CO2, VOCs, NH3, Hg and particulates)

Smart and Secure Borders (e.g. cooperate in law enforcement, screening and facilitation of legitimate trade and travellers across NAFTA borders, research the prospect of in some cases screening travellers and commerce before they enter North America)

Emergency Management and Preparedness (e.g. develop procedures for managing the movement of goods and people across shared borders during and following an emergency)

The protests in Montebello can help Canadian society exercise the value of these initiatives, but the debate ceases to be constructive when the left cranks up the rhetoric with ridiculous fear mongering about "sinister" intentions among our collective leaders. Our leaders do a pretty good job of being obtuse, arrogant, dense, misdirected, and unfocused, but "sinister"? That's a stretch.

Civil disobedience is an essential undertaking in a free and democratic society; protest is something we must exercise to ensure we retain it. However growing the economy, maintaining civil order, and protecting private property are also responsibilities, albeit of the state rather than the individual. Meetings between our national leaders and the captains of industry are not "sinister", they are a requirement of our growing and evolving economies.

Given the violent outcomes at other world summits over the past decade, infiltrating these large and potentially violent protests is not "sinister" either, even if the majority of protesters are raging grannies or middle-aged union leaders. The violence that occurred at festivals throughout the Thompson-Okanagan during the eighties and at many other summertime events should remind us all that good people in large crowds can turn nasty very quickly, even in the absence of premeditated intent. But at large protests where tempers run high and there is a history of violence, infiltrating to identify and contain those who engage in criminal behaviour is a reasonable and appropriate tactic, just like infiltrating any other criminal activity is an appropriate law enforcement action.

As Ms. Bass so eloquently wrote, "we are the people" and they are the government. Let's just not go confusing ourselves with enemies or victims, and governments that govern with sinister intent, all right?

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August 09, 2007

The Arar Commission released previously censored details today of Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar by Commissioner Dennis O'Connor. The new details reveal that Canadian security officials suspected that Maher Arar would be tortured following his deportation from the US to Jordan, then Syria, but did nothing.

The Arar Commission secured the release of these new details after Federal Court Judge Simon Noël’s ruled against the Government of Canada, which had argued that the information should remain censored for reasons of national security. Commission Counsel Paul Cavalluzzo congratulated the government for its decision not to pursue the matter further, saying, “The government should be commended for its decision not to appeal this judgment. The public interest is served by finally closing the book on the Arar Report."

An updated copy of the report is available here (newly uncensored words are in bold).

Mr. Arar was arrested in September while traveling through the US to Canada following a family vacation in Tunisia. Project A-O - the RCMP’s anti-terrorism investigation - opened dialogue regarding Arar with the CIA on October 4, 2002 whereas previously it had been dealing exclusively with the FBI on what it had been previously been considered a criminal matter.

The most damning aspect of the report however, focuses on internal CSIS communications that transpired on October 10 and 11, 2002:

In October 2002, CSIS officials knew that the United States might have sent Mr. Arar to a country where he could be questioned in a “firm manner.” In a report to his superiors dated October 11, 2002, the CSIS security liaison officer (SLO) in Washington spoke of a trend they had noted lately that when the CIA or FBI cannot legally hold a terrorist subject, or wish a target questioned in a firm manner, they have them rendered to countries willing to fulfill that role. He said Mr. Arar was a case in point.

On October 10, 2002, Mr. Hooper stated in a memorandum: “I think the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him.”

It is obvious these people knew Arar - who became a Canadian citizen in 1991 - would be tortured. Many Kamloopsians had the opportunity to meet Mr. Ara while he lived in Kamloops with his family. I never actually met the man, but upon those occasions when I did encounter him (wandering around Home Depot or just standing in the same line at the grocery store with our respective children playing at our feet), I couldn't help imagining myself in that Syrian prison, abandoned by my own government. However our Canadian security agencies demonstrated a sickening lack of concern for Mr. Arar's welfare, and so he languished there until October of 2003.

The affair has left a trail of debris in Ottawa, and rightly so. RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli resigned in December after providing conflicting testimony to Parliament about the case, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a letter of apology to Mr. Arar in January of this year.

When asked about the new details in Yellowknife today, the Prime Minister pointed the finger at the Leader of the Official Opposition. “Let's be clear,” said Mr. Harper, “we're talking about events that occurred under the previous government …those questions would be best directed to Mr. Dion.”

I can't imagine that the Prime Minister really thinks the debris field will spread to include Mr. Dion, who as Minister of Federal Intergovernmental Affairs and President of the Privy Council at the time of Arar's detainment and torture, was very probably not in the loop. The Commission has found no evidence that either Canadian security agency shared their suspicions of torture with the Liberal government of the day. However, the longer this issue holds the interest of Canadians, the longer Mr. Dion and company will face questions be held off-message.

But if we leave politics aside for a moment, I'm still left scratching my head at the CSIS and RCMP behaviour around the whole mess. What’s your take? Click on "Comments" below to share your thoughts with Right Up Your Alley: Kamloops readers.

August 03, 2007

Mr. Singh provides an explanation in his blog for why he voted against the city council motion to provide Domtar with an extension to its air discharge permit. Council decided to back the Interior Health Authority's letter to the Ministry of Environment that the extension be approved.

Mr. Singh argued against backing the extension, given that, "If Domtar chose to shut down the Kamloops mill, now or in the near future is probably the best time that could happen."

The councilor says that because Domtar doesn't adhere to a socially progressive charter, it might as well close. He apparently doesn't give a damn about the cost to the community of the 860 jobs that would be lost, or of the enormous spin off benefits created by that payroll, or of the direct materials and services the company consumes locally to sustain operations.

Mr. Singh is either too young, or his family too privileged, to recall the excruciating pain this city experienced during the eighties and early nineties. A combination of high interest rates, economic downturn, and strikes hit our most important employers - resource companies - so hard in the early eighties that it took twenty years for the city to recover; in 1984 the unemployment rate in the Kamloops region hit 20 percent, and it remained between ten and fifteen percent throughout the nineties. Mr. Singh can talk long and loud about record low employment rates and a more diverse economy today, but he should try to keep in mind that a rising tide lifts all boats. Our economy isn't so secure that we should invite Domtar to close, especially over an emissions extension that even the Interior Health Authority supports!

Other communities would love to have this employer; Domtar employees make big coin, and the benefits to Kamloops and other communities are manifold. If Domtar goes, so goes the huge corporate tax burden the company pays the city, after which Mr. Singh will have to look hard to find other tax sources to fund technology junkets and pet social housing projects. Is the city in a better position to withstand the mill closure now than it was twenty years ago? Of course it is. However, Mr. Singh's cavalier musings seem very poorly informed by the kind of personal hardship that so many in this town experienced before the current boom lifted the good ship Kamloops.

Betty has been busy making a variety of similar announcements this summer, including $250,000 for School District #73, and $6.6 million for the Kamloops airport expansion. She also made comments this week about efforts to deliver federal dollars to fix "killer" sections of the the Trans Canada Highway between Kamloops and Chase. While that stretch of highway isn't within her riding, she reasoned that her "... constituents use it every single day."

While Ms. Hinton may not be the only Conservative MP spreading cash and good will, she has certainly been one of the most long-suffering. After spending one term as the Deputy Speaker of the House, Ms. Hinton was rumoured as a candidate for a cabinet position when the Conservatives took the 2006 election; afterwards the Globe and Mail described her as "smart" and "an extremely hard worker". Nevertheless, she wasn't named to cabinet, and until very recently seemed unable to put any big numbers on the board locally.

Given the frosty reception she received from City Council earlier this year when Mayor Terry Lake dismissed her airport funding advice and called her "condescending", Ms. Hinton must now feel somewhat vindicated.

I personally prefer to measure MPs by the influence they are able to exert over caucus in respect to national issues, rather than how much pork they can spill within their ridings. That's not to say we don't deserve airport funding (we do) or infrastructure funding (we do), however we have much more to offer Ottawa in return.

The struggles and values and priorities and opinions of the citizens of Kamloops exist at the core of the middle-Canadian and western-Canadian identities. We expect our governments to play a role in our community, but after existing outside the provincial and federal thought bubble for so many years we're actually fairly independent as individuals (that's a good thing).

The Trans Canada Highway and two national railways that run through this town sometimes remind us of the tenuous connections and broad differences between our own experience, and the experiences of other Canadians in other towns, and other villages, and other cities all along those razor-thin corridors across the country.

Like most Canadians, we're far from perfect. We complain about global warming and rail about herbicides, but would still much rather bitch about water meters and push residential limits out away from the downtown core instead of fully committing to more density and less destruction of grasslands and agriculture.

We rely upon an economy that has experienced a lot of transition, and when all the beetle-kill wood is gone, will experience even more. We've got a hockey team that is constantly under repair. Overall we may be less diverse and more redneck than most big cities, but we still find a way to lead from the front of Canada's social reality, having elected not only the first Chinese mayor in North America (for three terms!), but also the first Status Indian to the House of Commons (who later became a member of cabinet, then a senator).

I'm ecstatic that Ms. Hinton secured funding for the airport other local projects. If the only thing that mattered at the polls was how much pork she brought home, I'd say she's earned my vote.

But that isn't what really matters, so I don't know why it seems to be the bar against which we've chosen to measure her. We should measure her based upon how well she represents the values and common sense of the citizens of Kamloops Thompson Cariboo, and to what extent those values help shape the nation and its laws.

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Ms. Hinton sent council a letter encouraging the city to adopt Support the Troops stickers for city vehicles.

The response was predictable; the suggestion was voted down, with only a single vote of support from Councillor Joe Leong. Kamloops Mayor Terry Lake said, "I would not support putting it on city vehicles.”

According to the Kamloops Daily News, there are several other Canadian cities that currently use or have used the stickers including Toronto, Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and Edmonton. Mayor Lake and Councillors Peter Milobar and John O'Fee both spoke against the suggestion.

As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs, Ms. Hinton's suggestion is a no-brainer. The Support Our Troops is an attempt to thread the needle of political acrimony over Canadian involvement in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, whereas other Canadian cities use them, Ms. Hinton no doubt anticipated this council's reaction; as a politician, she probably counted on it.

Given that Councilor O'Fee ran against her as the Liberal candidate in 2004, and that Mr. Lake was his campaign manager, there continues to be a solid association between the two and the federal Liberal party. And with a recent poll by The Strategic Council for CTV and The Globe and Mail showing support for the Afghanistan mission at 36%, Hinton knows that a substantial portion of voters in the region will find issue with Council's decision. One can safely assume that if that portion of the population supports the mission, even a larger segment would support the vehicle decals.

With both Councilor O'Fee and Mayor Lake taking positions against the decals, Ms. Hinton leverages this community's continued association of the two with the federal Liberals. That no doubt will help solidify her base of support, which improves her opportunities for re-election whenever we next go to the polls. Combine that with the airport funding announcement, and I expect our MP is feeling pretty good about her week.

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July 19, 2007

As expected by pretty well everyone in Kamloops, with the apparent exception of Mayor Terry Lake, Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn today announced that the federal government will contribute $6.6 million to the expansion of the Kamloops Airport. Lunn explained that, "...the expansion is a major step to position Kamloops to attract long-haul flights and new destinations throughout North America," reported CBC News.

Local MP Betty Hinton, who ran a half-page ad in the Kamloops Daily News yesterday inviting the entire city to the announcement, pointed to economic impact that may counterbalance the effects of the Pine Beetle Epidemic "An upgraded airport combined with aggressive marketing will encourage more people to visit and do business in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, and assist communities within the airport area to develop strategies to diversify their economies".

"This project absolutely would not have happened if not for the very hard work of your MP Betty Hinton," said Lunn. The money will apparently come from the Mountain Pine Beetle Program, a $200-million fund that is earmarked for improving economic infrastructure in affected regions in British Columbia.

Why not? Apparently because the Mayor never received a personal invitation, related Councillor Tina Lange. While standing in for Mr. Lake at the announcement she expressed some frustration at the feds for not properly explaining the event to the Mayor. The way she sees it, that's why Mr. Lake decided to skip the event and instead attend a previously scheduled meeting.

Odd, that bit about not receiving an invitation. The lead story in this morning's Kamloops This Week (Is Today Hinton's day to shine?) indicated that invitations were sent out to Venture Kamloops' contacts database, which CEO Jeff Putnam described as, "mostly business and community leaders". Wouldn't one think that the Venture Kamloops contacts database should include the Mayor? Does that sound like deliberate slight at the federal level, or a glaring oversight at the local level?

So how about Ms. Lange's charge that the feds hadn't properly explained themselves? Doesn't a half-page ad imply some degree of importance? Why then wouldn't the Mayor attend? Apparently officials at the Western Economic Diversification Fund had told Councillor O'Fee that, "...it's not a funding announcement".

One could dispute whether the information Councillor O'Fee was provided was accurate or erroneous. The government press release states:

Western Economic Diversification Canada is actively working with the Airport Authority to finalize all steps in the due diligence process, allowing the Government of Canada's investment to flow to the Kamloops Airport project.

If we split hairs, without the due diligence finalized it's not really a funding announcement, but rather an announcement of an intent to fund, in which case nobody was misinformed, and the Mayor's decision to attend other business was simply a poor decision based upon some flawed assumptions. Realistically, it was more probably a matter of Rona Ambrose's being more than tight-lipped in an effort to save the thunder for the minister.

We'll have to wait to see how it plays out in the local media, but I anticipate that the infighting between City Hall and Ms. Hinton will garner almost as much press over time as the announcement itself. There will most certainly be charges of cheap politics leveled against Ms. Hinton by political players and/or by media commentators who believe that she purposely sidelined the Mayor. And that kind of comment is fair, in light of how the Conservatives have bypassed other levels of government when making a couple of major announcements this summer.

In the end, Ms. Hinton and company have delivered in a short period on a local need that was on the radar long before they came to power. Having been instrumental in winning this funding, Ms. Hinton is pretty well a shoe-in as MP in the next election, as she has most certainly solidified her base at the very least. Now we'll have to wait and see how much her political opponents can counter-spin the good news to solidify their own base, and maybe earn some new support.

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The Canadian Press story, which appears to have been written by a summer intern who erroneously rehashed content from a similar story in April, at which time the Prime Minister originally announced his intention to appoint Brown upon Liberal Senator Dan Hays anticipated June retirement. The story today garnered all of six column inches on page seven of the daily.

So in the absence of information from local media sources, let's review some brief background about Mr. Brown's appointment.

Mr. Brown will be the second elected senator in Canadian history. It's been 17 years since Brian Mulroney appointed Stan Waters to the Senate in 1990. Unfortunately he served only a year before his death of brain cancer in 1991.

Harper's move is an indication that 1). he is serious about senate reform, and 2). he is serious about beating his competition like a rented mule with the issue before the next writ is dropped. Whether or not the Canadian people care about the Senate as much as Harper believes is another matter, but nevertheless it is a long-standing hobby-horse of western alienation which seems to finally be receiving some action instead of hot air. Oddly, Stephane Dione wandered into the discussion as though he had never read a briefing note.

First Dion insulted the Albertans that elected Brown by saying he was, "not sure the prime minister chose the best person." Second, he questioned how democratic Brown's election had been. This is the same Bert Brown who was elected with 312,041 votes. How many is 312,041? That's more than seven times as many votes as were polled by all candidates from all parties in Dion's riding in 2006. Or, as Lorne Gunter wrote today, 312,041 is almost 100,000 more votes than all federal Liberal candidates in Alberta put together polled in that same election.

One would think that the Daily News could muster more than a shallow grave for this story, which has significant implications throughout Canada, but in particular here in the West.

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June 30, 2007

It wasn’t difficult to predict how the Kamloops and District Labour Council would react to Councilor Joe Leong’s suggestion (at Tuesday’s City Council meeting) that the group should back up its demand for a referendum on the Riverside Park/waterfront hotel issue by putting its money where its mouth is.

While his motion didn’t garner enough support to result in a letter to the Labour Council, it’s obvious it was a tongue-in-cheek initiative from the outset.

Leong’s motion drew the Labour Council out of the peanut gallery long enough for it demonstrate how completely out of its depth it was on the issue. Rather than seizing the opportunity to engage Leong, Labour Council President Karen Cerniuk instead folded her tent and complained that Leong didn't understand her organization’s affairs. That flat-footed response, of course, is exactly what Leong was looking for; Ms. Cerniuk confirmed that the labour group really doesn't have a role to play in determining if, where, or by whom a hotel will be built.

However this issue plays out, maybe other advice-rich but solution-poor groups will get the message that if they want to tell city council what to do, they should be prepared to play a roll in how it gets done. And kudos to Councilor Leong for having the political chops to drop both a gauntlet and a road map back to the peanut gallery.

Welcome back Ms. Cerniuk, I kept your seat warm.

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